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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27763459">Penny For Your Thoughts (And Fortunes)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/DontOffendTheBees/pseuds/DontOffendTheBees'>DontOffendTheBees</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bittersweet, Brotherly Love, Castiel Does Not Understand Humans (Supernatural), Castiel is Protective of Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester Needs Castiel, Dean Winchester Needs Love, Dean Winchester Needs a Hug, Dean Winchester is Protective of Sam Winchester, Fluff and Angst, Guardian Angel Castiel (Supernatural), Heartbroken Dean Winchester, Hopeful Ending, Implied angel magic time travel, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Magic, Past Cassie Robinson/Dean Winchester, Pre-Slash, Prompt Fill, Time Skips, Timestamp, Wishes, Yearning, could be read as platonic deancas but why would you</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 22:20:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,754</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27763459</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/DontOffendTheBees/pseuds/DontOffendTheBees</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Dean sighs raggedly, and holds them tight against his chest for a second, letting his eyes close, letting the smell of coffee and muffins drift across the street towards him, letting the last stupid tears out before he has to lock them up tight again.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Because there is no way, no goddamn way in hell, that he’s explaining to Dad why he’s crying over a dollar twenty-five.</i>
</p><p>In which Dean counts his small blessings, and Castiel embraces a quaint human tradition.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Castiel/Dean Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>151</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Penny For Your Thoughts (And Fortunes)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><i>Have  you ever just seen a coin on the pavement or some such and wondered how  nobody else has picked it up? Just right there? All shiny and aahh?  Just waiting for you? SO.  There was an old wives tale that angels can make wishes and toss coins  down to us mortals below. And those coins are only viewable to the  person they wished about. Hence how nobody else picked up that pavement  coin, it was waiting for *you*. So do you think that sometimes Cas sits  on a fountain side and idly tosses coins into a fountain, and Dean finds  those random coins showing up wherever he goes</i><br/>-My excellent friend, who only found out about Destiel this week and is already sending me galaxy brained concepts like this</p><p>When me ol’ pal sent me this I blacked out for like 2 hrs and when I came to this was sitting in my google docs. I’ve tidied it up a little bit, it might not be my finest work but I’m pretty happy with it! Romantic yearning implied but could be read as platonic, just a little sweetness with shades of angst, enjoy &lt;333 </p><p>TW for implied/referenced child abuse, drinking, heartbreak, John Winchester’s A+ parenting, inevitable canon timeline/continuity mistakes by an author who hasn’t watched the show since 2015</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He’s fifteen, and things are getting bad again. Not that they ever got <em>good</em>, just… quiet, for a little while. Should’ve figured it would never last.</p><p>Sammy’s gone, took off again. A goddamn eleven year old kid out alone on the streets. If Dean doesn’t find him, if he goes back to the shitty motel they’re calling home without him, back to <em>Dad…</em></p><p>He angrily scrubs at his eyes, willing the tears away. Stupid. What good did crying ever do anyone? Crying is for when you’re so drunk you can’t see, like Dad gets sometimes. The kinda drunk when you’re past the anger. Dean has more important things to do than cry- he has a punk-ass little brother to catch, for one. Shit, he couldn’t have got far… right?</p><p>Tearing his hand away from his face he looks at the ground, hunting for tracks on the grimy tarmac as if his baby brother’s another monster on the run. Not that he’s expecting anything that obvious- Sammy’s smart, smarter than him and fast, too. He could be on a bus and out of the goddamn state by now.</p><p>Something does catch his eye, but it’s no footprint. It’s a spot of light in the dirt, a shiny metallic gleam a couple feet away, slap bang in the middle of the sidewalk by an alley opening. Nothing important, not as important as finding Sam- probably just some piece of junk metal, but…</p><p>He walks over, bends down, picks up what turns out to be a shiny nickel and turns it over in his palm. He’s never <em>seen </em>a coin so bright, like it’s never been touched. It was practically hollering at him from the ground, begging to be picked up. He wonders why no one else had already.</p><p>He’s still distracted, weirdly entranced by the mystery coin when he hears a quiet sniffle from the alley next to him, further down. He straightens up in a heartbeat- he knows that sound.</p><p>“Sammy?”</p><p>Silence, tense. Then, falteringly: “D-dean?”</p><p>Dean doesn’t waste another second, charging into the shadows. Doesn’t even entertain the idea it might be a copycat, or a trap, no way- he’s been looking all goddamn night and Sammy, he’s been alone all this time, oh, <em>God- </em>“Sam! Sammy, where you at?”</p><p>He doesn’t get an answer but he finds the kid anyway, hunkered down behind a dumpster. He’s not quite a grubby-faced Victorian orphan yet but he looks about as sad and lost as one. Dean drops to his knees on the gross asphalt in front of him and crushes the little dummy in a hug, letting him ugly snot-cry into the front of his shirt because he’s too goddamn relieved to complain. Much. <em>“Jesus, </em>Sammy, I thought- <em>never </em>do that again, y’hear me?!”</p><p>Sam babbles some shit into his chest- about Dad, about hunting, about greasy diner food and leg cramp from the car rides and all the other shit he complains about all the time because hello, he’s an eleven year old who basically lives in a fucking car and it sucks- and for once, Dean just lets him. Doesn’t try and defend it, sweet talk him, distract him. Just lets him rant and rage and cry for once. Maybe if he’d let him vent a little earlier, before he decided to get the hell outta dodge…</p><p>He screws his eyes shut, holds little Sammy close, just letting the kid put himself back together while Dean takes a moment to, quietly, fall apart. In his right hand, he clutches onto a handful of Sammy’s sweatshirt- <em>fucking dumbass, running away without a decent goddamn jacket. </em></p><p>In his left, a shiny coin, held so tight in his fist it leaves perfect little pink indents in his palm.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>He’s twenty-three, and he’s still not got over that super gross and annoying urge to cry sometimes. Go figure.</p><p>He’d rather be sat in the warm, familiar Impala than out on this cold, shitty park bench, but tough shit; what he needed more than a warm place to cry was for Dad to not be in eye or ear shot while Dean quietly broke down like some lovesick teenager. He'd said something vague about scoping out the area to explain himself, give him some cover, leaving John in the car listening in on local police radio and none the wiser. He'd never know why Dean really peeled off. Never know his son, his <em>hunter </em>son that he goddamn counted on to have his back, was crying in public over a girl. A girl he told <em>everything, </em>blabbed to like an <em>idiot.</em></p><p>“Stupid,” he mutters, bringing his palm down hard on the bench next to him. “Stupid, <em>stupid.”</em></p><p>At least she hadn’t told anyone. Well, no, she probably had- but not to spill the secret. Probably just telling stories about her crazy ex-boyfriend at college parties, laughing with her drunk friends about the bullet she’d dodged by dumping him. Crazy Dean Winchester, who thinks he’s a monster hunter. Probably make it into the best man speech at her future wedding- <em>‘Hey, Justin may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but at least he ain’t moonlighting as a gravedigging ghostbuster. Congrats on the upgrade, Cassie!’</em></p><p>Sniffing furiously, Dean puts his head in his hands, forcing his palms so hard against his closed eyes it makes weird colours dance inside his eyelids. Stupid. Shouldn’t have told her. This is <em>exactly why </em>they never…</p><p>Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t goddamn matter. What’s done is done, she said what she wanted to say, and… and it’s over. Done with. Dean’s just gotta nut up and move on, that’s that.</p><p>And in order to do that, he needs some goddamn coffee.</p><p>Eyeing the storefront across the street, Dean roots around in his pocket for loose change. It’s the cheapest looking coffee joint he’s seen round here so far, but that might not help him- the card he’s been using the last couple months finally got clocked for fraud, and Dad’s is in the car with him. His only hope is whatever coins he can scrape together, and so far the outlook’s grim. A dollar, a couple quarters, and some lint that may or may not be grave dirt. Perfect. Looks like he’s shit out of luck.</p><p>Again.</p><p>He scowls and scuffs the dirt under the bench with his foot- and gets distracted from angrily pocketing his meagre findings by a glint of silver in the soil.</p><p>He blinks, squints at it. Actually, it’s not as subtle as he thought. The soil’s barely covering it. A coin, like the quarters in his hand but brighter, newer. He leans down to carefully pick it up, shaking a few flecks of dirt off- and finds another coin hiding right underneath it. And another under that. Two more, five in all- five shiny silver quarters, new as the day they were minted, bright as buttons and shining prettily in his palm like a goddamn miracle.</p><p>Dean sighs raggedly, and holds them tight against his chest for a second, letting his eyes close, letting the smell of coffee and muffins drift across the street towards him, letting the last stupid tears out before he has to lock them up tight again.</p><p>Because there is no way, no goddamn way in hell, that he’s explaining to Dad why he’s crying over a dollar twenty-five.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>He’s twenty-nine (or a little under one, if you count the day he hauled himself outta the grave as a re-birthday), and he’s tired. So goddamn tired.</p><p>But, thankfully, not so tired that he can’t appreciate the little things. Like sneaking salt into Sam’s coffee when he’s distracted and watching his brother’s entire face screw up in disgust. Or the great tunes crackling from Baby’s cassette player as the two of them perch on her hood, eating their crappy fast food while they watch the sunset and mull over their plan of attack for tonight.</p><p>Or the glimmer of shiny, new copper in the gravel at his feet.</p><p>“See a penny, pick it up,” he drawls, scooping up the coin with a smirk. “How many pennies d’you think I gotta pick up to cancel out all those mirrors we broke with Bloody Mary?”</p><p>“No idea. You’re probably nearly there, though,” says Sam, shaking his head. “How do you always do that?”</p><p>Dean frowns. “What?”</p><p>“Just find coins like that. I swear you find them <em>everywhere, </em>and they’re always like new- you’d think I’d have spotted at least a couple first.”</p><p>“Guess I got the looks <em>and </em>the luck, huh?”</p><p>“Jerk.”</p><p>“Bitch.”</p><p>It doesn’t take long for the conversation to devolve from there, Sammy dropping his case about Dean’s mysterious power in favour of playful insults, but Dean keeps turning the penny over in his fingers, feeling the smooth, pristine surface with hands smoothed of all their past cuts and callouses. New coin, new hands, new start. Kinda. New start to fuck up everything again in a new, more spectacular way than before.</p><p>He does find the things a lot. He never really thought about it, ‘till Sam pointed it out, but all through his life, at some of his lowest moments, the coins have always been there. Sometimes just pennies, sometimes quarters or dimes- once even a goddamn silver dollar, the kind they don’t even make anymore. All of them shiny and new. Sometimes showing up right when he needed it; when he needed the cash, when he needed to stop and look at his surroundings, once at exactly the moment he needed to <em>duck, </em>fuck, that one freaked him out. Sometimes they helped him in ways he never would’ve seen coming, almost enough to make you think they were freakin’ sentient or some shit.</p><p>But sometimes, the coins were just coins. Like this coin. It’s shiny, it’s <em>pretty, </em>but ultimately it’s just that. A shiny, pretty penny, sitting in Dean’s palm when he already has a belly full of food, his brother by his side and no flying objects nearby ready to take him out. Completely useless.</p><p>He tosses it in the air, catches it on its downward spin, and slaps it down on the back of his hand. “Call it.”</p><p>“What for?”</p><p>“Who picks the music.”</p><p>Sam brightens. “Tails.”</p><p>Dean lifts his hand, and laughs like an asshole at the shiny Abe Lincoln winking up at him. Okay, so not <em>completely </em>useless. “Nice try, loser.”</p><p>Sam groans, but doesn’t argue. The coin toss is sacred.</p><p>Maybe the coins are, too.</p><p>Dean smiles, strokes his thumb over the surface one last time, and pockets the penny on his way back round to the driver’s side. Maybe it’s barely a dent in their years and years of bad luck debt, but it’s a start. Enough to feel like maybe some things could go their way.</p><p>Enough to make one real tired guy think that somewhere there’s something, someone, on his side for a change.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“So you throw it, and you make a wish!”</p><p><em>Splash. </em>“I wish-”</p><p>“Oh- no, sweetie, don’t tell us! If you tell people your wish, it won’t come true!”</p><p>The small child giggles with energy befitting her heightened blood sugar content, and Castiel watches the strange ritual closely. Watches the child’s sibling take a coin from the mother’s hand and repeat the motion, smiling inanely as it disappears beneath the rippling water of the fountain. Watches the little gathering wander away, not waiting to see if their ‘wishes’ come true or not. Not seeming to care much either way.</p><p>Interesting.</p><p>He materialises at the edge of the fountain with the merest flick of his wings, gazing down at the water where the trickling streams from the raised central dais cause the otherwise flat surface to roil and churn. Beneath the artificial waves, a plethora of coins glint back in the afternoon sun- silver, copper, some green with age, many with faces and tiny, tiny letters, visible to Castiel at a distance only by virtue of his significantly heightened sight. Unusual, that so many remain. Castiel has witnessed, mostly from a distance, the lengths many humans will go for any amount of monetary gain, even a handful of coinage, and these are ripe for the taking. There must be strict rules in place to prevent interference in others’ wishes.</p><p>Oh perhaps the unspoken taboo is desuasion enough.</p><p>Castiel reaches into his trench coat pocket, and emerges with a small handful of coins. Some were Jimmy Novak’s, when he still wore this body and this coat for himself alone. Those, the coins that have been rattling in this coat’s pocket since the day he inhabited it, he carefully separates and puts back, should he- or Jimmy- need them one day.</p><p>The others were passed to him from the hand of Dean Winchester.</p><p>
  <em>“So you can hit a payphone, okay?” he had said, gruffness of his voice belied by amusement in the twist of his lips, and something soft in his gaze. Layers upon layers of bewildering humanity, visible to Castiel’s inexperienced eye only by the merest flickers of Dean’s soul where it pulses within him. A bright and fickle thing, every bit the confusing, immaculate creation he had once cradled in his hands. “Can’t have our all-powerful angel of the lord stuck with no minutes when we need him again."</em>
</p><p>Castiel weighs the coins in his hand thoughtfully, picking a tarnished penny from the top of the pile. The slightest unconscious twitch of his grace wipes the surface clean in an instant, the copper gleaming like new against his fingers. Eyes narrowed, he slowly extends his arm, and drops the perfect penny into the fountain.</p><p>
  <em>Plop.</em>
</p><p>He watches it sink, watches it settle and become one with the mass of coins below the water’s surface, and tilts his head. Very interesting. No perceptible physical or magical effects, and yet the motion is… calming. Satisfying, even. The journey of the coin, the sound of impact, the lightning fast flicker of his thoughts as he lets his mind alight naturally on whatever he might choose to ‘wish’ for. No evidence to be found that the action had any effect, or that his wish might be granted.</p><p>Perhaps this is how humans feel when they bow their heads in prayer.</p><p>He throws in another coin. And another. Over and over again, until his palm is empty, every cent assimilated into the growing underwater hill of human hope. Every piece accompanied, of course, by a wish. Wishes pertaining to the man who gifted him the coins, wishes that suggest themselves without any conscious decision making on Castiel’s part; wishes it simply feels correct, <em>good </em>to make, on behalf of a man who seldom entertains wishes for his own sake. A man who scarcely believes himself worthy of life, let alone pleasure, let alone peace or plenty.</p><p>Castiel surveys the scene a moment longer, seriously, and nods. He has done his part. Said his prayers, so to speak. Little to do now but what the humans do, all day, every day of their strange, short lives. Wait.</p><p>And hope.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <em>Of course, he tells no one of the exact nature of his wishes. Not Dean, not Sam. Not even you, reader, though I’m sure you can hazard a guess on at least a couple with the information available to you. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Who’s to say if all of them came true or not, but perhaps even the ones that did not managed to find Dean in some way. Put a bright spot in his day, a twinkle in his eye. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Castiel does not ask, does not allude to the event in the slightest, not even on the day he catches Dean idly turning a shiny penny between his fingers and Castiel wonders, and hopes. Not even when he returns to the fountain some time later, with a fresh batch of coins from various sources, and repeats the ritual again. And again, quite often, when he has the time or the money, or just the strange, quietly unsettled feeling he gets when he goes too long without seeing Dean in person. He dare not say a word no matter how many times he tries. It was a very explicit condition of the ritual, after all; telling anyone else his wishes would break the sacred covenant between wish caster and wish granter, nullifying his prayers.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And if no one else will pray for Dean Winchester, not even Dean Winchester, then Castiel will shoulder that burden also. With honor, and dedication.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And firmest, fondest wishes. Always.</em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for reading &lt;3 If you liked it please do let me know! I'm scribbling some other SPN-related things rn (inc. the inevitable my take on a fix it) and cheerleading is always appreciated, as is knowing what people like to see ^^ I was super into this show back in like 2012-15 but never wrote for it, so it's a learning curve! Never thought I'd be writing my first SPN fic in 20-fuckin-20 but boy the november starts comin' and it don't stop comin' huh- whatever, I'll take the distraction and serotonin.</p><p>Thanks to the lovely friend who shared this idea with me, and yeah, thanks to you if you've found this little fic amongst the hundreds of others being posted daily rn and you gave it a chance and stuck through to the end, ily &lt;333</p></blockquote></div></div>
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